we-are-solid-gold

What are your thoughts on if there is a season 11, it also ending on a cliffhanger? I'm so torn about the whole thing. I can't stand to have M&S ending up like this but I'm also afraid what more damage CC might do.

Well, here are my thoughts, were we to be blessed with another season, if there is any sense in this world and things follow the rules of logic.

Fox goes, “Hey, it took way longer than we expected to get the next season greenlit, and it looked for a while like it might not happen at all. I wonder if maybe we should have listened to Gillian Anderson when she kept talking about closure and how she was excited to come back in order to say goodbye properly, and not just assumed that she would be gung-ho to do an 11th season, even after we insulted her by not offering her as much as Free Guitar Lessons McHamcouver. So maybe this time we should assume that this is the last season, and end it satisfyingly. If we end up coming back someday to do another one, that will be great!”

And CC goes “Look, I ALWAYS INTENDED to get Mulder and Scully back together, I was just creating DRAMA and CONFLICT, because we can’t just have them enjoying each other and being together and united against an external force, like, we can’t just GIVE people the thing that is literally the only thing that anyone who watches this show cares about, we have to instead TAKE AWAY that thing and wreck it and make it not fun and give people OTHER things that they do NOT want, that’s how you make TV, everyone knows that. But anyway, I was going to RESOLVE it, it just took longer to get to the next part than I expected, for reasons literally no one could have foreseen. But I HAVE LEARNED MY LESSON and this time I’ll let them have 21 seconds of a semi-satisfying ending that resolves at least .5 of a thing.”

And David and Gillian go “Hey, it is so much fun to get the band back together and do this show, and we are such good sports who do such a kickass job of promoting this thing even when it doesn’t really deserve it, and it was super fun to make one more season together even if we are not fucking, and this time some makeup people were hired that didn’t make everyone look like if a clown had to disguise its clown face with human makeup, and we’re so glad to know that Mulder and Scully are still out there doing their stuff and maybe we can come back and revisit them someday, if we get paid in solid gold dildos, but we are happy with what we delivered to the fans and can walk away from this EXTREMELY LONG chapter of our lives feeling good about it. And now we’re going to go do an indie romantic comedy together.”

So, that’s my hope, that it would go something like that. In short, that everyone would have learned their lesson about taking for granted that there would be a next chapter, and therefore would resolve it in a way that would preserve the legacy. And that if CC didn’t want to do that, Fox, who owns the show, would make him. So, that would be the optimistic version. I can’t imagine that CC would end ANOTHER season that took years to come together on ANOTHER cliffhanger and make that same gamble again. I CAN’T IMAGINE. And yet, and yet.

It wasn’t every day that Jason was given free reign of the Wayne Manor kitchen.

It also wasn’t very often that he managed to be in charge of his family. Damian was dutifully chopping carrots and Tim was mincing meat. Harper and Cullen were peeling potatoes in the sink. Jason himself was stirring a pot full of spices and chicken broth.

Dick was out with Bruce and Alfred, distracting them so they didn’t come home for a few more hours. Jason couldn’t remember what had possessed him to do this, make a meal for Bruce and Alfred. Maybe it was the cooking channel that Roy had been watching recently, or the meals Kori was trying (and failing) to make. Or maybe it was how thin Alfred had gotten recently, or how worn out Bruce was looking. Either way, here he was.

“The Nighthawk Turnbull VIP 1, or Very Impressive Pistol, is just that, impressive. The Turnbull VIP models are the first additions to our VIP Collectors Line. As one of our most exclusive models, the VIP is built as a true heirloom piece that is the result of a collaboration between Nighthawk Custom and Doug Turnbull. Because of the time and skill that that is required to give this unique appearance, these guns are very limited in availability. This pistol is crafted with all of the finest customizations, including a classic case hardened and polished frame. The high polished, charcoal blued slide, matches the slide stop, magazine release, and thumb safety. To top it all off, we added a 14k solid gold bead front sight, mastodon ivory grips, and a custom case. Every pistol will vary slightly in appearance because each case hardened frame and set of mastodon ivory grips is unique. For years, firearms customers have loved Turnbull Finishes. Because of the relationship between Mark Stone of Nighthawk and Doug Turnbull, and the respect both men have for the product each company produces, they have created a partnership that has resulted in the finest 1911 pistols on the market.”

I can feel my heart steadily
palpitating and my breath shortening when I see the paper calendar plastered on
my desk showing how little time I have left before Rara leaves me for
Wellington to continue her studies, a city that I once called home for 2 years
and still actually do. Knowing that I’ll be apart from Rara for at least ten
excruciating months is damning. There is somewhat of a heightened degree of
fear and nervousness compared to the feelings I felt when I myself left her for
Wellington a couple of years ago. Even if at that time, I just had recently
lost my father.

Why does it seem, as I age, I
have more fear of the world? Have I realised, how nefarious the world can be?
And to face it by one self is unfavourable? Does it simply go back to the idea
of “safety in numbers”?

And will I, acknowledging all
this, while I wait to see Rara again, be strangled by separation and perhaps
loneliness? “Death to you torn by loneliness” Chairil Anwar once wrote in a
poem titled Sia-sia or Useless.

I wonder if this is love? Or
at least a part of love, the other face of love. This fear and longing.

If it is indeed so, how
painful love actually is, even if to give a clear definition of love is far
from easy, yet the significance of this emotion called love on the mind and
heart is then a curse for many. And yet it is an issue that is not new to me or
any of us.

When I look back at 2015, perhaps the one matter that I have truly
struggled to understand, thought of the most and written the most in my black
little diary is the matter of love and everything that follows with it.

There is no other issue that continually pervades and harasses my mind
on a daily basis other than this thing called love. It’s not merely a question
of what love is and try to define the intricacies and perhaps the limitations
of love, if any, but it has more so to do with how do you love? Blindly?
Intelligently? With fervor and passion? With calmness and silence?

How do you love in a world that pushes you to heighten your ego? Where
the self is constantly seen as the center of the universe? That everything else
outside the self is often of less importance than the desires of one self?
Where do I go from here?

Should love be particular? Or universal? How do you love and maintain
what little love you have in yourself when everything & everyone around you
constantly tugs on the hateful part of our minds? From our scornful,
self-centered lovers to our sometimes anachronistic, irrational parents to our
bigoted society and to be a bit political, to our often paranoid fear-mongering
government that will every now and then take the irrational steps to please the
uneducated many.

How then, not only knowing all this but also understanding all this, how
do we love?

Or is this a question of unimportance in a society where the only thing that
we have left as a society is the value of usefulness towards each other? A very
practical utilitarian view. People that are deemed useless for a society is
seen as an unnecessary burdening individual. People are insisted to be upgraded
or self-upgrade to the specifications and expectations of society or forever be
relegated to the far marginalized end of the social caste spectrum.

Surely there is something more to love than the ideas instilled by lovey
dovey Hollywood movies and relationship magazines.

Is our desire to love, to be loved, to have love, nothing more than an
instinctual response to fearing that we can at any day, anytime, become
nothing? Evoking an existential fear in a world where not only to become
something is important but to become something great is the pinnacle of our
personal achievements.

I have tried to personally educate myself on love especially the months
before my wedding back in September of 2015. Where this issue of love and
relationships became a constant issue that me and Rara conversed deliberately
on. We are supposedly in love with one another and to talk about our love for
one another from a more logical viewpoint rather than just simply emotional seems
reasonable.

Both of us have become close witnesses of broken homes and distraught
marriages yet ‘forced’ to be with each other for the sake of their children or
any other justifiable means. And although we have learned much from them we can
never be sure that we will not repeat what we have seen, heard and felt. I
understand that I write this during our honeymoon phase, where our ‘love
hormones’ are supposedly still high. Thus happiness between us is still easily
attainable and workable.

We, however, understand that as it dwindles we must find a way or a
reason to be together, hopefully more so than mere unconscious, unrelenting
attachment towards each other. This is one of the reasons why I personally
pushed to talk more on love with Rara as well as how we define our relationship
with each other. Has it worked to help us diminish any quarrels? Perhaps, but
what seems to be more important is the fact that we have learned more about
each other especially our fears, angers, and sadness. Emotions that can be
quite confusing for the person suffering it and the person witnessing it. Is it
not the neglected and suppressed fears, angers, sadness which is what destroys
relationships?

I have friends whom naively think that marriage will solve their relationship
issues that they have. Further more, if it is not solved by marriage then
perhaps having a child will solve whatever quarrels among them. My experience
in seeing those who just recently got married and those who have been married
for many years shows that marriage doesn’t guarantee anything beautiful and
joyful. We would only like to think so. It does nonetheless guarantee a culturally
appropriate reason to maintain something unhealthy and broken. Understanding
this, my marriage with Rara has not become the pinnacle of our relationship and
thus the epitome of a happy, healthy relationship. Shouldn’t the happiness of a
relationship go beyond the label of marriage? If a relationship is deeply
superficial, is marriage then a beginning or an end of ourselves?

People don’t seem to understand we can denounce our commitment to each
other even if we have 18 carats of solid gold wrapped beautifully around our
little brown fingers. The legality of our marriage doesn’t make it harder for
any of us to be deceitful towards each other. Not even the possible shame and
angered family mobs that we may experience even if we were to be liars towards
one another.

I wonder if me and Rara have changed after our wedding? I don’t think much have changed,
other than we are it seems more considerate (at least I would like to hope so)
of our individual plans so that it will intertwine with one another and not
have it grow apart. The dynamics of the relationship has altered little, the
power relations between us have remained neutral and stable. Basically she has her own stuff going on and I have my own stuff going on.

I guess when it comes to change it is the people around us that have
changed their attitudes towards us. Especially when we mention that due to legality,
cultural and religious issues we got married in Singapore, as inter-religious
marriage is technically forbidden by Indonesia and to choose to not have a
religion it seems is forbidden as well. This of course is another issue that I
can write at length on.

And I wonder why marriages fail? Of course due to a variety of reasons. Yet what’s lost during the course of marriage
that was present in the beginning? Romantic love of course is lost without
doubt, but to hold on to mere love is reckless as like any other emotion love
is impermanent. It oscillates wildly dependent on a variety of factors sometimes external sometimes internal,
including trust, sometimes it comes and goes, sometimes it just goes and never comes back.

I’m still new with this marriage thing but I guess from what I have experienced
so far in me and Rara’s ever-evolving relationship is understood by one thing.
And that is, whatever is said and done in our relationship, how we define our
relationship, how we understand it, is very much dependent on our very own
relationship with ourselves.

Our relationship with each other is but a manifestation of how we
understand ourselves. An inquiry to ‘us’ needs as much of an inquiry into ‘me’.
Can we be understood when we cannot understand what we want to be understood?

It seems from what I have experienced through out almost my 30 years of
living, is the more broken we are and the more unwilling we are to fix
ourselves will eventually spill over to how we relate to one another. A broken
relationship seems to indicate (while of course avoiding generalizations) a
broken self. The amount of toxicity that we have towards each other depends on
how toxic we are towards ourselves.

And jumping to the Indonesian culture a bit on this, the many outrageously ostentatious Indonesian weddings are quite toxic to begin with does not help us understand how much we or society has poisoned our views on relationships. Especially in regards to the issue of simplicity, an idea in an age of constant instagram comparison paired with familial duties and the desire to maintain our cultural heritage can have middle-income families spend in excess of Rp. 350.000.000 ($30.000) and invite at least 1000 people. Surely the money can be spent on something much more useful for the new couple. It infuriates me to even think about this so I’ll just quote Rara on this, “That what is simple and intimate is what gives meaning.”

Yet I guess it makes sense in a very communal society such as Indonesia.
Where the need to maintain our connection with the community, in hopes of
achieving some kind of return of investment (to use a business term) in any
form, there needs to be of course an investment at first. The money spent at
weddings is more of a social investment in order to maintain connections in a
very tight social fabric.

But aside from this I’m still curious on what infatuates us Indonesians the
most with marriage? What compels many Indonesians to marry even when monetary
and psychological readiness is far from our minds? Is it truly love that we
want? Are we so easily blinded by the temporary romanticism of love that we brave
ourselves to gamble in marriage for the sake of quenching our desire for lasting
love with our lives at stake? But then what brings about this seemingly
unshakable confidence for marriage?

Is it perhaps the inevitable ticking clock that presents us with the
possibility of forever being alone?

Not only is it our desire to marry as soon as we have the legal and
biological chance that I question but I find it extremely nauseating when I
look back and see that even my own wedding has been hijacked by needless
grandeur. The simplicity of love (or what I have been led to believe what love
is suppose to be like) has been diminished from the beginning. It has in many
ways, albeit its cultural justifications, become a celebration of
superficiality at its finest.

People seem to not only shy away from the simple but to condemn it as well.
Marriage has become a transactional socio-economic endeavor. The pinnacle of
actualizing a commitment towards one another has exploded into a manifestation
of our desire to increase our economic capital and heighten of our social
capital, i.e. our social standing or social decorum. Perhaps it is this that I truthfully and deeply dislike, how many Indonesian weddings are painstakingly
tailored to exhibit the extent of our economic and social capital. It is far
from the romantic allure that supposedly governs people to get married in the
first place.

The purpose of our wedding or perhaps even many Indonesian wedding is to
show others of our successes and excesses hence crystallizing our place in the
social hierarchy and to maintain a tradition that is blatantly pandering itself
to ostentatious beginnings. Have we become, due to our highly capitalistic
society, too complex in our desires?

But is the desire for marriage merely seen as the prerequisite to
fulfill the desire for a family? I don’t have a prime personal example of what
being a good family means. Not my personal family or perhaps even extended. I
have examples of particular human beings that have beautiful personal traits
but oddly they were unable to translate it within a familial
relationship.

It is because of this reason I question much on starting my own family.
I fear that a beautiful beginning would end in a nightmarish disaster or even
worst, staying together bound by nothing more than tolerance of each other and
the fear of the possibility of destroying the happiness of their offspring.
Surely there is another way of pursuing a relationship, pursuing life.

Truth be told I am unhappy of how many of my older and younger friends
have maintained or even started their family. Even the very definition of family
is troubling as it can only start with a trio, the couple and a baby. Anything
less than that seems unfit to be called a family, as if they are limping their
way to happiness.

You know even after all this questioning I can wholeheartedly say I
still don’t know exactly know what love is. Once you start questioning the
imposed definitions, be it visual or literal, it easily crumbles into
nothingness. It reminds me of a quote given to me through an email of good
friend “A thing can only be explained by something subtler than itself and the
most subtle is love. So tell me, how do you explain love?” -Summun, a 9th
century Sufi wandering around Baghdad.

I do know though love needs hard daily work. Not only when those special
yearly beautiful anniversaries come dropping by and we choose to celebrate it
in the most romantic way but are still at each others throats the following
morning. The everydayness of love is what counts, that is what needs to be
maintained. From spending time together as to engage in similar experiences, to
the willingness to be open to one another much like a good friend, to just
simply talking while watching a thousand stars lit up like Christmas lights. So I guess love is about friendship? Friendship
but with benefits?

Friends with raunchy and of course caring benefits?

Although come to think of it, just going back a bit on nothingness
before, perhaps maybe love is nothing. I understand that ‘nothing’ seems to
indicate negativity but when perceived from a more objective angle is actually
quite liberating. To love and be loved because of nothing dissolves
expectations.

And is it not expectations that often lead us to disappointments?

One of my favourite Indonesian
writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer lamented on love in his lovely book ‘Child of All
Nations’. Seeing through love’s romantic ideals and grapples on the wickedness that
hides beneath love he writes, “And also love, much like everything else, has a shadow. And the shadow of love is called suffering. Nothing is devoid of a
shadow except light itself…”

To love is to suffer yes we all understand this but surely there is a much healthier, intelligent way to love than what we have now, as suffering is also a choice. A hard choice to let go for many, including me, but nonetheless it is a choice.

Dressed up, messed up
Put on a show
So the whole damn world’s gonna know…
That we were here
Running ‘round, blackin’ out
Young bloods burning it down
That we were here
Setting flames, taking names, just 'cause we own the town
We gonna write it solid as gold
We’re gonna make it, so they gonna know
That we were here (yeah, yeah, yeah)

To answer, I personally find Dustin very loud and arrogant. He’s a plant guy, not a fish guy. He keeps fish but watching his videos you can tell they aren’t his priority. Especially with a lot of his species videos. He advocates for some bad practices too such as large fish in small tanks, filtration not bring needed, mixing incompatible species or having poor stock numbers. As I said in my reply before, he’s got that pet store attitude, the if you want it go for it, it’ll do fine however you want it… I don’t agree with this mindset. He also has some poor practice, taking dirt, gravel and other materials and putting them in the tank. It can be safe, I’m not doubting that the dirt from his land isn’t safe. But with that said not everyone has the luxury of a private acreage and well. I’ve spoken to him a few times personally… He often discredited anything I said as not needed, a waste of money or just a lot of work. He also really fits in the “If I don’t like it you shouldn’t either and this is why.” Type of response. “I hate Congo tetra… They’re too jiggity.” What does that even mean? He’s also a little too big on wild caughts for my comfort level… He’s fine I guess for plants but I wouldn’t really get too excited beyond that.

As for other youtubers.

We have Jenny from solid gold, a great and knowledgeable goldfish keeper and an absolute sweetheart! I have zero concerns about her care.

Joey from DIY kings. He’s a wonderful monster fish keeper and his videos have taught me a lot. He’s Canadian too which personally makes me happy. He’s not so much on explaining care as he is the breakdown to a simple and cheap tank. But he does care for his fish deeply.

John from KGtropicals. He’s a cichlid keeper and breeder. He brings a really natural view to the business side of things. He’s very relaxed with his care, much like I am. But he still puts the fish needs first. He has many q and a sessions where you can actually get a lot of answers yourself.

pecktec. I can’t think of his name off the top of my head. He’s a fun nano keeper and has a very simple down to earth system for planted tanks. I do question his stocking every so often but I know he does the maintenance and understands how this works. He’s very natural, and though his videos may seem different or odd they’re enjoyable.

Rachel O'Leary. I love this woman! She’s a great nano keeper and breeder. If you want to know about different species and some nice tips she’s a really good source. I have nothing bad to say about her, someday I wish I could have setups like hers. Even her monster fish, they’re kept how they should be.

Those are the main ones I can think of. There are a few others I watch, but I have already put someone who I think is better overall or they don’t post/have enough videos. Feel free to add your own.

A new nighttime show is in the works for Disney’s Magic Kingdom-style parks, in which guests will be invited to stand around the castle and imagine that there are fireworks in the sky. The current shows will end by September of this year.(x).